Eating the Empire
Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century BritainTroy Bickham

When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco, Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea or a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware of the mechanisms of imperial rule and trade that made such goods readily available?

In Eating the Empire, Troy Bickham unfolds the extraordinary role that food played in shaping Britain during the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c. 1660–1837), when recipes from around the world peppered a new generation of popular cookery books, and coffee, tea and sugar went from rare luxuries to some of the most ubiquitous commodities in Britain, reaching even the poorest and remotest of households. The trade in the empire’s edibles underpinned the emerging consumer economy, fomenting the rise of modern retailing, visual advertising and consumer credit, and, via taxes, financed the military and civil bureaucracy that secured, governed and spread the empire.

‘Everyone is wondering what the corona pandemic can teach us about ourselves and the world we live in. Maybe the answer is in a new . . . book on British food habits in the 17th and 18th centuries . . . Although Troy Bickham had no idea about the virus when he wrote his book, he draws a vivid and suddenly up-to-date picture of how people's everyday lives intertwine across worlds and time zones, when goods are constantly crossing borders.’ — Politiken, Denmark

‘Eating the Empire is a delicious soup, which brings humble and familiar ingredients together into a satisfying and nutritious meal. By studying the foodways of the British Isles during the long eighteenth century, Bickham shows how ordinary men and women encountered and appropriated the Empire, Europe and the Enlightenment and developed a national cuisine that was both local and global.’ — Erika Rappaport, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara and author of A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World

‘The nature of food and eating is so central to social experience, and this book succeeds in saying something new in a lively scholarly field, showing an admirable grasp of both the broader background – Britain and the empire – and the specific details about a range of foodstuffs.’ — James Walvin, Professor Emeritus of History, University of York and author of How Sugar Corrupted the World: From Slavery to Obesity

‘Everyone is wondering what the corona pandemic can teach us about ourselves and the world we live in. Maybe the answer is in a new . . . book on British food habits in the 17th and 18th centuries . . . Although Troy Bickham had no idea about the virus when he wrote his book, he draws a vivid and suddenly up-to-date picture of how people's everyday lives intertwine across worlds and time zones, when goods are constantly crossing borders.’ — Politiken, Denmark

‘Eating the Empire is a delicious soup, which brings humble and familiar ingredients together into a satisfying and nutritious meal. By studying the foodways of the British Isles during the long eighteenth century, Bickham shows how ordinary men and women encountered and appropriated the Empire, Europe and the Enlightenment and developed a national cuisine that was both local and global.’ — Erika Rappaport, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara and author of A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World

‘The nature of food and eating is so central to social experience, and this book succeeds in saying something new in a lively scholarly field, showing an admirable grasp of both the broader background – Britain and the empire – and the specific details about a range of foodstuffs.’ — James Walvin, Professor Emeritus of History, University of York and author of How Sugar Corrupted the World: From Slavery to Obesity